Automatically Enhancing Excel Data and Publishing to ArcGIS Online

Files

As of FME 2024.0, support for Esri ArcGIS Online (AGOL), ArcGIS Enterprise Portal, and ArcGIS Server Feature Service formats has transitioned to a unified approach using the new Esri ArcGIS Feature Service (Format). This format replaces the legacy reader/writer formats for each of the three services.

Starting in FME 2026.1, the legacy formats will be hidden in the Quick Add menu. Instead, equivalent functionality is now provided by the downloadable Esri ArcGIS Connector package, available on FME Hub. The package also includes new web services and key transformers such as the ArcGISOnlineConnector, ArcGISAttachmentConnector, and ArcGISBranchVersionManager. The package can be installed directly through the Quick Add menu in FME Workbench. Once installed, the new Esri Feature Service format will appear in the Gallery as a unified method for interacting with all three types of Esri ArcGIS Feature Services.

For details on this transition, including guidance on updating existing workspaces, please refer to the article: Working with Esri ArcGIS Feature Services in FME.

Introduction

Want to use Microsoft Excel and ArcGIS Online in an automated workspace? Create a workspace in FME Form and create an automation on FME Flow that looks at an Excel sheet of addresses and publishes the final product to ArcGIS Online. Find the sample workspace in the Files section to the right of this article. This example showcases FME's ability to use ArcGIS Online custom transformers, change detection, and directory watching.

The video below was created using a previous version of FME. The steps are the same, but the images will look different.

Video

Transformers Used

Creator

All workspaces need a source to start the transformation, usually a file or database in a reader. This transformer initiates the workspace by creating a number of empty objects to pass to the next transformer when you run it.

FeatureReader

This transformer reads in a file using a published user parameter so that it can be passed in when you eventually publish it to FME Server.

ArcGISOnlineBatchGeocoder

This is a custom transformer that uses ArcGIS Online’s REST API to perform an analysis service. This service matches point geometry with features that have addresses attached to one or more of their attributes.

ArcGISOnlineGeoenricher

This is a custom transformer that uses ArcGIS Online’s REST API to perform an analysis service. This service matches points with demographic data of your choice, such as age, population, or household income.

AttributeExposer

This transformer exposes certain attributes embedded as list attributes of a feature. The previous custom transformer, the ArcGISOnlineGeoEnricher, does not expose those attributes dynamically.

AttributeRemover

This transformer is used to remove unwanted attributes from the features.

ChangeDetector

This transformer detects changes from one dataset to another, given a key or attribute that would be unique to compare. It has multiple output ports, such as inserted and updated. We use the inserted output port for this example.

BulkAttributeRenamer

This transformer removes spaces and replaces them with underscores “_” so that ArcGIS Online can upload the data in the attributes, the same as the previous file.

Below is the sample workspace with all the transformers mentioned above. To run the workspace on your machine, you'll need to configure the two custom transformers, ArcGISOnlineBatchGeocoder and ArcGISOnlineGeoenricher, with your own Esri connections.

For detailed instructions on how to create web connections in FME, please see the following articles:

FME Flow

Publish Workspace to FME Flow

Go to File > Publish to FME Flow (or Deploy > Publish in FME 2025.1+). The Publish a Workspace to FME Flow and Run It article provides step-by-step instructions for creating an FME Flow connection and publishing workspaces to FME Flow.

We want to set this up as a “Job Submitter” Service because the Job Submitter Service accepts and runs workspace job requests.

Automation

We will create an automation with a "Resource or Network Directory" trigger that checks a specified directory for new files. When new address files are uploaded to the directory, the workspace will run and add those addresses to the geodatabase on ArcGIS Online. Getting Started with Automations has many more examples and detailed instructions of how to set up and run automations.

Additional Resources

Data Attribution

The data used here originates from open data made available by the City of Vancouver, British Columbia. It contains information licensed under the Open Government License - Vancouver.

Search